I thought the game did a pretty good job of showing cops as a gang just like any other in Night City. Of the two cops you work with, one has a questline about the cops being shitty and negligent, and the other is a just fixer who sends you off to do illegal shit like all the other fixers, independent of the police.

Also the cyberpsycho missions were fun, what with the trying to nonlethally arrest super-powered mentally ill criminals to get them help before the NCPD comes in to straight up murder them.

It was a real strength of the show that even characters who were primarily comic relief (like Badger and Skinny Pete) had levels of depth and realism to them. If Walt jr was portrayed as anything other than an ordinary teenager with a physical disability, it would feel very incongruent with the rest of the series.

I owe this show a rewatch.

Undermining American hegemony by...destabilizing a region that America benefits from being unstable? Not really the same situation. Russia is actually doing real harm to our ability to maintain a global stranglehold. That is a good thing, even if Putin is otherwise a shitty reactionary capitalist.

Fighting against imperialism is actually just imperialism, if your intentions aren't pure.

Let's get these doctors some borders or whatever.

Okay, but did anyone call them "duties" when you were a kid? The school people who oversaw recess were the duties, and if you got in trouble, you'd get sent to The Wall. Then the other kids would play Wall Ball at that wall and you'd have to dodge the ball for your own safety.

I tell my friends this, and none of them had this experience. They don't know what "duties" are, they don't know wall ball or associate it with punishment. Was this only my childhood?